Knights Era Reservoir Discovered Beneath Parking Area In Valletta Ditch
An underground reservoir dating back to the time when Malta was ruled by the Knights of St John has been discovered beneath the St Andrews’s Ditch car park.
The discovery came after two deep holes that appeared in the ground and which looked as though they posed danger to pedestrians were flagged to the authorities.
The car park was evacuated and the area cordoned off as police officers and members of the Cleansing and Maintenance Division investigated where the two holes led to.
It was at this point that the reservoir was discovered with the assistance of members of the online community Il-Ġibjun. The Facebook group aims to educate the public on the country’s reservoirs and the need for there to be more of them.
Little information is available about its size, however, according to a post on the Belt Valletta Facebook page, the reservoir is in a bad condition and could collapse at any moment.
Broken slabs and missing arches, it would appear, have rendered the entire structure unstable, likely exacerbated by the large volumes of water that hit Malta at the start of the month.
Just last month another Knights-era discovery was made in Valletta when a painting from the time was discovered behind a bricked-up arch at the Museum of Archaeology.
The painting was discovered during a restoration project and was described by Heritage Malta as a unique surviving element that could reveal a lot about the decorative scheme of the hall prior to the 19th-century.
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